Rex Ryan Climbs With the Bulls

The sports news has officially taken a turn for the absurd. Not that this is a bad thing, mind you, particularly in the N.F.L., where it desperately needed a turn from the Aaron Hernandez murder charges. Even baseball could use a little silliness this time of year, just to get you through the All-Star Game break without resorting to checking Alex Rodriguez’s Twitter feed for entertainment.

But because Jets Coach Rex Ryan specializes in absurd, he has decided to star in this particular turn, surprising only in that he did so by running with the bulls in Pamplona. Really.

O.K., in this instance, “running with the bulls” means “holding on to a fence to avoid the bulls,” but what Ryan’s adventure lacks in bravado it gains in lack of stupidity. And with Ryan, well, that qualifies as an accomplishment. The bulls, you may have learned over the years, do not read the annual memo that this is a tourism publicity stunt. They actually gore people. This year they chased some folks into a river to get their point across effectively enough.

The Jets are lucky this fell into the all-in-good-fun category instead of having to schedule bull horn removal surgery, and in that category he gets to join Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III, who has decided to make himself a rap star of the decidedly silly variety. Although you may curse him when you find yourself with a sudden craving for Pop Rocks.

Perhaps eventually there will be a video of the funeral of the Browns fan who posthumously grabbed himself a bit of attention when his obituary in The Columbus Dispatch requested that Browns players serve as his pallbearers because he wanted them to let him down one more time. The Browns should have played this up for all it’s worth. Instead, all Scott E. Entsminger, 55, of Mansfield, Ohio, gets for his trouble (and his funeral) is a jersey. Sigh.

Right now, however, it might be preferable to be a Browns fan than a Patriots fan, considering the whole Hernandez thing. Monday’s development was the owner Robert K. Kraft saying he was “duped” by Hernandez, which Ron Borges of The Boston Herald, among others, finds either incredible or disturbing. Kraft was joined in the backtracking department by Hernandez’s college coach, Urban Meyer, who has made a whole dance out of these moves.

Fortunately, baseball is around to provide a bit of comic relief. New York’s two teams contributed a bit of their own, the Yankees’ courtesy of their grounds crew’s losing battle with a thunderstorm and the infield tarp.

The Mets, meanwhile, had a bit of fun with a foul ball by Milwaukee’s Norichika Aoki.

The Reds found nothing funny about this highlight, Carlos Gomez robbing Joey Votto of a home run with an over-the-wall catch. The only thing absurd about it is that Gomez has done this four times this season. Fortunately, not all at Votto’s expense.